Editorial: Correcting gender stereotypes

Supreme Court’s Handbook on Combating Gender Stereotypes will help clean up judicial discourse

Language is critical to the framing of laws and how they are conveyed. The choice of words through which the intent of the law is expressed thus becomes very important for the entire legal community, including judges. Words used in courts have material power over our lives. The Supreme Court’s recent initiative to launch a Handbook on Combating Gender Stereotypes is a welcome move that promotes gender sensitivity. The 30-page handbook identifies common stereotypes about women, many of which have been accepted by courts in the past and demonstrates why they are inaccurate and how they may distort the application of the law. Hopefully, it will eventually help in cleaning up the judicial discourse. Courts are the ideal places to start reversing gender stereotypes. The handbook, being made available for both judges and lawyers, contains a glossary of gender unjust terms and suggests alternative words or phrases which may be used in pleadings, orders and judgments. This will guide the legal community to avoid the usage of inappropriate gender terms. It is high time we stopped using the expressions such as ‘seductress’, ‘whore’ or ‘woman of loose morals’. Words such as these, currently used in legal discourse, both by lawyers and judges, reflect archaic ideas with patriarchal undertones. By equipping judges and the legal community with the tools to identify, understand and reject stereotypes, it is aimed to pave the way for a more inclusive, impartial, and gender-just legal system. Words such as eve-teasing, prostitute and housewife may soon be out of the legal lexicon and would be replaced by terms like street sexual harassment, sex worker and homemaker.

Instead of the word ‘faggot’, the term accurately describing the individual’s sexual orientation would be used. The word ‘bastard’ would be replaced by ‘non-marital child’ or, ‘a child whose parents were not married’. Though the use of stereotypes may not alter the outcome of any case, the stereotypical language would end up reinforcing ideas contrary to our constitutional ethos. The Code of Civil Procedure 1908 is used to refer to persons without financial means as ‘paupers’. In recognition of the fact that language conveys certain ideas about its subject and can diminish the dignity of such persons, the statute was amended and the word ‘pauper’ was replaced with the word ‘indigent.’ The latest handbook will give a fresh impetus to our quest towards a gender-just legal order and will be a crucial document to ensure that courts can deliver equal and impartial justice to individuals of all genders. The guidebook flags words like concubine or dutiful wife, or faggot, which encoded a frankly toxic worldview, and suggests alternatives. Terms like chaste woman or mistress are not neutral descriptors but carry a heavy load of social judgment. They paint a picture of the male as the provider, and the ‘good’ female as dependent and docile.

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